


Judo in the Schwarzwald

by Seiberwing



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Beast of Gévaudan - Freeform, Chases, Curses, Except this isn't AU because this sort of shit happens to the Lupinverse every Tuesday, Gen, Judo, Minor Body Horror, Monsters, Werewolves, polyship if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23495956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: Inspector Zenigata and his young partner track Lupin's gang to the Black Forest of Germany following a routine heist of a cultural artifact and a less-routine immediate return of what was stolen. The inspector soon finds that he's not the only one on the hunt in these woods...and if he's not careful, he might become the hunted.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	Judo in the Schwarzwald

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been to Germany and I know nothing about judo. Feel free to correct me if I got anything about these two items wrong.

Zenigata swiveled his flashlight across the wooden barricade in front of them, then up to the thick pine trees that seemed to block out the starry sky completely, and back to the hurriedly-made sign saying that a movie was being filmed here, so the area would be off limits until further notice.

"The _Schwarzwald Tourismus_ website doesn't mention any areas barred to tourists on this trail, Inspector. And these blockades don't really look like they're government quality." Zenigata's young partner, Goro Yatagarasu, looked up from his phone. The dim screen lit up his young face and determined eyes.

"Hah! Lupin wants to keep the tourists out so he can make his plans in secret."

"That explains the strange noises people reported hearing from the woods at night. Should we go and get backup, Inspector?"

"No, by morning he might be long gone. Stick near me, Yata. Lupin and his gang like to sleep late, so if we come by just before sunup like we are now, we'll almost certainly catch him while he's asleep."

Of course that assumed that Lupin would be acting according to habit.

Zenigata had been chasing Lupin long enough to know the difference between 'weird' and 'weird for Lupin', and good chunks of this case had been 'weird for Lupin'. The Crystal Rose of Gévaudan had been stolen from a private estate in the south of France two weeks ago, and that part had gone like usual - a card, a daring robbery, Lupin losing his pants for some contrived reason, etc. 

Then, a week later, the rose was returned. Left right where it had been before in its glass case. There'd even been a little Lupin card attached to it as an apology. France's most dedicated art historians had checked it over and deemed it authentic, not a forgery put in its place while the real item was sold off at some underground art market to some Chinese mob boss or American billionaire who didn't give a damn about its cultural value. 

Now, Lupin's trail had led him to the most remote trails of the Black Forest, following scant tips from someone who'd seen Fujiko filling up her motorcycle at a gas station two days ago. Between heists the gang tended to spend their proceeds (or lick their wounds, depending on how the heist went) in more opulent places, usually one of Lupin's city hideouts. They rarely stayed in the same county as the one they'd just robbed, and besides Goemon none of them were much for enjoying the splendor of nature. Fujiko staying with them after an unsuccessful heist was also particularly out of character.

So all of this stunk, and it made Zenigata even more twitchy than usual. He heaved the crudely made barricade across the trailhead out of the way and headed down into the shallow valley. Yata followed behind him, a long rifle slung over his shoulder. The trail in front of them had the imprints of motorycle tracks on them over and over again, as if someone had been driving the trail in a circle for days on end. Mixed in with them were human shoeprints and the prints of something bigger that Zenigata couldn't quite place. Bear, maybe. Or Lupin disguising himself as a bear.

He could smell the heady scent of cigarettes (Jigen's brand) before he saw the lights from the tiny encampment, and that itself was dodgy. Why go to all the trouble of hiding yourself away and then have lights and smoke? He switched off his flashlight and crept as quietly as a man his size could manage through the undergrowth, ears perked for the sound of breathing or the click of a cocking revolver. Yata crept behind him, occasionally having to stop and detangle his rifle barrel from the trees. Zenigata really should have told him to leave that thing at home, even if it was only loaded with tranq darts.

The tiny campground was a mess. Two tents (one large, one tiny, the latter probably Fujiko's) around a flickering (and unattended!) campfire, with empty cans strewn about messily. Folding chairs cast looming shadows against the trees. Several generators were also humming, attached to cords that trailed off into the darkness.

Bunch of slobs, they'd even left their laundry laying about...wait.

Zenigata's eyes picked out the soft grey outline of a battered hat resting on top of a cooler. Jigen's hat, recognizable despite the hurricane it appeared to have endured. Zenigata fixated on it as both a clear sign that Lupin had been here and a clear sign that something was dangerously wrong.

_Why the hell would he leave his hat outside the tent? If he's awake he should be wearing it, if he's asleep it'd be in the tent with him. And what the hell happened to fuck it up so--_

The thought was cut off by the long, loud blare of a whistle echoing through trees. It was answered by two sharp blares, louder and closer. Then came the crunch of footsteps pounding through the undergrowth, huge heavy ones that sounded far too loud to belong to any woodland creature.

"Get down," Yata hissed, trying to get the rifle up over his shoulder

And then, in a sight that drove out any thoughts of literally anything else, Zenigata caught a flash of a blue jacket between the dark trees.

"Lupin!"

"Inspector, wa--"

Zenigata was off like a shot, pounding after his quarry and leaving poor Yata in the dust. Later he'd apologize, when he wasn't hot on the trail of the man who gave his life meaning. His powerful legs bounded over tree roots and ferns along a path that was...surprisingly well-lit, for the backwoods of the Black Forest. There were battery powered lanterns scattered along the path, and every so often a larger floodlight that made chasing Lupin easier than usual. 

The strange crashing noises continued behind him but he paid little attention to them, focusing entirely on the lanky silhouette of Lupin ahead of him on the trail. 

"Lupin! Stop and let me arrest you!"

"Kinda...kinda busy, Pops!" Lupin called over his shoulder, barely able to get the words out for how hard he was breathing. His voice sounded as if he'd been running long before Zenigata showed up. From personal experience Zenigata also knew exactly how good Lupin was at running; if he gave up theft he'd make an excellent marathon athlete. "Can you...come back in the morning?" Lupin panted, vaulting over a boulder that Zenigata cleared seconds later in a single leap. Something around his neck bounced and glinted as he ran.

"No! Come back and receive my cuffs!"

"Told you, I'm busy!" Lupin grabbed the item around his neck and put it to his lips. He blew a loud, long note on it, answered by a second whistle blast from above them.

"Finally, cripes…"

Lupin slowed his running and staggered to a stop, nearly bowled over by Zenigata as the man came up behind him. 

"G...Got you," Zenigata managed to pant out, before he was cut off by a surprisingly gentle man landing with both feet on his back. The blow knocked him sprawled to the ground, expertly taking the wind out of him but not damaging his spine, as a wooden sandal rested on the back of his neck. That was Goemon for you, a master of precision.

Oddly, for the one member of Lupin's gang who didn't smoke, Goemon _reeked_ of cigarette fumes.

"What do we do about him?" Goemon asked softly. The loud crunching noises behind them intensified.

"Which one?"

"The one I'm standing on."

Zenigata's jaw worked, trying to draw in enough breath to make a loud noise of protest at being Goemon's footstool. His shivering arms slowly curled under him, trying to get enough strength to push himself up. 

Turning his head he saw Goemon with his sword in one hand and something dangling on a chain from the other, with an electric lantern hung around his neck. Zenigata couldn't put his finger on it but something about the sword seemed strange. Squinting into the dim light, he could make out tiny wisps of smoke coming from the box on the chain. It looked like an incense burner, but the only smell coming from it was...the cigarettes.

"Stall, I think. Make sure it's safe for him."

"Can we tie him to a tree or something? Is that safe?"

"Doubtf--" Goemon's leg kicked out and he spun to the side as Zenigata finally heaved himself to his feet, coming up in a crouch. Zenigata brushed the dirt from his face, glaring at the both of them. One shaky finger pointed at Lupin, trying to communicate 'I will arrest your ass so hard your grandchildren will be born in handcuffs' without the breath to say it.

Goemon held his sword up defensively, and Zenigata finally cottoned on to what was so strange about it. There was no light glinting off the blade. It wasn't Zantetsuken at all. Goemon was wielding only carved wood.

Any hope of asking what the hell was going was going on was yet again cut off by a new arrival into the clearing. Zenigata jumped out of the way as a small tree fell between him and Lupin, followed by a paw the size of a frying pan.

Zenigata looked up slowly as the stars began to be blocked out by a massive, growling form.

"This is why I told you to come back tomorrow, Pops," Lupin whispered as the creature entered the clearing. The lamplight showed its front feet most clearly, crude hand-like paws with hairy digits ending in claws the width of kitchen knives. Its huge head ended with a furry muzzle and fangs protruding over the lips. Its torso was covered in thick dark hair, with hyena-esque spots across its back. Zenigata couldn't see how far back its body went into the trees, but his panicked estimates said it had to be at least ten feet long, and as tall as he was.

Goemon leapt, smacked the monster in the face with the wooden sword, and then elegantly leaped up into the branches of a nearby pine tree.

"Here!" he shouted, waving the incense burner wildly. "Here! Follow!"

The monster snarled, a rumble that shook Zenigata down to his core. The light around Goemon's neck flickered away as Goemon ran across the tree branches, disappearing into the darkness with the monster tearing off after him.

Lupin let out a long, wavering breath.

"Okay. That's bought us some time." He reached into his pocket, dug out a flask, took a long drag from it, and then after a moment offered it to Zenigata. Zenigata found himself mechanically taking the flask without complaint and sucking at it, finding it to contain what tasted like an energy drink. Red Bull, maybe. It was liquid and that was what mattered.

"Eh?" he said helplessly, gesturing at the fallen trees that remained clear evidence he hadn't just hallucinated a monster.

Lupin took an unsteady seat on one of the fallen trees.

"You remember the Crystal Rose of Gévaudan? Turns out the thing had a curse on it."

"Damnit, Lupin, again? Stop stealing things with curses on them!"

"Half the time it's bunko, okay? And we returned it, anyway--don't light up, the scent attracts it."

Zenigata lowered the cigarette from his mouth. No wonder Lupin looked a mess, if he couldn't even smoke.

"But the curse is still on you?"

"It's waning. The first night that thing showed up, it was...a lot bigger. Meaner, too." Lupin took another swig out of the flask. "Been getting a little smaller every night since we returned the rose. Easier to handle. We figure the only thing we can do is wait it out."

"That thing comes after you _every night_?" And it had been _bigger_? Zenigata felt his stomach twist at the notion.

"It's why we fucked off to the _Schwarzwald_. Easier to keep it from going after anyone else, or breaking the scenery. We've been trading off chasing duty between the three of us. Usually Fujiko can keep it going for at least an hour just on her motorcycle going around in circles." He waved his whistle. "One of us gets tired, taps in the next one."

"You signal each other with the whistles, then--wait. The three of you." Zenigata's thoughts flickered back to that battered hat abandoned at the campsite, and he felt his already twisted stomach turn into a klein bottle. The only time Jigen would leave his hat behind...would be if he'd gone where he couldn't take anything with him at all. Zenigata put a thick hand to his mouth, mentally saying a prayer for the poor gunman's soul.

Lupin checked his watch. "So I wouldn't advise trying to arrest us just now, Pops, unless you got a cell that can keep that thing in. Or out."

One long blare of the whistle. Two shorter blares, punctuated by the sound of a roaring motorcycle. Lupin grabbed Zenigata and dragged him back from the path just before Fujiko came soaring by, the monster loping along behind her. 

"When does it go away?"

"Sun up." 

"Then I'll arrest you then!"

"And what will you do after the sun goes down?"

"I'll--once you're in prison walls, we can set up a trap for that thing. Destroy it before it can get at you."

Lupin chuckled gently. "No, you won't. And even if you could, we wouldn't let you."

"After that thing took Jigen?"

"Took--" Lupin began to laugh, in that fond way that always managed to make Zenigata feel an awkward and twisted combination of emotions somewhere in the pit of his stomach. "I mean, I guess you could say it's been taking Jigen. Certainly it's been putting him off his sleep schedule."

"He's your best friend, how can you be so glib about a monster eating him!" Sometimes he wondered if the man was a true sociopath, even when he was doing that butterfly-inducing laugh.

Lupin was nearly doubled over by now, clutching his stomach and leaning against a tree. "Pops, the monster didn't eat Jigen," he said through shaky, giggly breaths. "The monster is Jigen."

"...what."

Oh. Oh god. Jigen had been the one who'd actually taken the rose. Of course.

"The first time he transformed we were on the highway out of France. Stopped because we thought he had to puke and instead he rolled out of the car and just...swelled up all big and furry and snarling. We ran because we're not idiots, he clawed the shit out of some poor farmer's fields and chased the car - kept pace with the damn Fiat for over an hour until we started getting low on gas." Lupin's hands mechanically went into his coat pocket and were halfway into pulling out a cigarette before he remembered himself and tucked it away again. "And he's done it every night since."

"Damn."

"It got less nasty after we returned the rose, like I said, and it's been shrinking. It's like having a pitbull around, except the pitbull's the size of a car and has twice as many teeth, but it just wants to chase. I think it knows it's us, y'know? In an animal sort of way, it knows we're its people. Even when it starts catching up it doesn't hurt us too badly. Other people, I'm not sure about...but if Jigen likes you, the monster probably likes you too." Lupin gave him a hard nudge with his elbow. "You're a likable guy."

"Not to thieves!"

"Yeah, even to thieves."

Zenigata thought of the wooden sword Goemon had been wielding, much safer than Zantetsuken to a beast that wanted to bite and bat at a toy rather than devour its prey. The cigarettes coming from the incense burner had smelled like the type Jigen preferred. The motorcycle tracks going around and around in circles, slowly wearing the monster down.

"And so that's your plan? Just hide in the woods and let it chase you every night?"

"The way I clock it we probably have a few weeks left, tops, before he's just normal Jigen again. But yeah, that was basically the plan. We've tried to keep him chained down a few times and it's gone, haha, about as poorly as you'd expect." The laugh sounded as ragge as Lupin looked. "We're, uh. We're really gonna get our cardio this month. But it's our fault he's like this, so we gotta all pitch in and help keep him from eating a random hiker or getting shot by the park rangers."

The sky was starting to brighten. Lupin kept looking from the treetops to his wristwatch, chewing his lip intently as the sound of revving engines and thudding feet ebbed and intensified along the path. 

"How long we got until sunrise, Lupin?"

"Not long. Maybe ten minutes."

"Mmm. Would it help if someone else tagged into the roster? Assuming Jigen likes me enough."

"Eh?"

Zenigata reached into his pocket for his own crumpled cigarette package. He tapped one out, put it between his teeth, and cupped his hands around his lighter. With some pleasure he watched Lupin tense up as he lit the cigarette and drew a long drag from it.

"I mean. I'd be the best man for the job, right? I'm an expert in chasing you idiots around. I think I can handle a little bit of getting chased in return." 

"You think you got the stamina for it?"

"It's only one monster. Usually I'm dealing with four."

On the next pass by Fujiko, Zenigata stepped out into the road, blocking the monster's path. It could have leapt over him easily but instead it paused, tongue lolling out as it stared him down. Zenigata took another long drag on the cigarette and then slowly removed it from his lips. He tried to pick out any intelligence or familiarity in the monsters eyes, at the very least some hint of whether he remembered this was the man constantly trying to arrest him (and occasionally saving his life), but the waning shadows made the beast's eye sockets into dark unreadable pools.

"Okay, doggie," Zenigata muttered. He set his feet firmly, taking a pose that decades of judo training had turned into easy muscle memory. "Haven't had a sparring partner bigger than me since I was 15, let's see if I can still do this."

The monster charged, its legs moving in ways that didn't quite seem to add up to the actual gesture of an animal. Zenigata forced himself not to focus on the components and to simply brace for the impact, as he would a human opponent. Take the impact, grab, ignore the texture of thick fur and the smell of earth, brace, avoid the dripping jaws, roll backwards, throw. Just normal judo things.

With a yelp, the monster landed on its back. It twisted and was back on its feet in a moment but with the darkness lifting, Zenigata could see the entire form of the monster now - and he could see that its tail was wagging. The deep, loud half-howl it let out reminded Zenigata very much of the way his neighbors' husky would voice its opinion with 'roo roo row!' on having the ball thrown for it again.

"Okay, boy," he whispered. "Let's play."

Another charge, another nage waza, and the tail was wagging so hard it was knocking over nearby bushes. It tried to charge again, but halfway through the run its thunderous footsteps dragged to a halt on the torn-up path. The monster let out a low rumble that seemed almost like a sigh and fell to its knees.

Or rather, its knees fell off. 

"Yeah, this part's a little gross," Lupin noted. "You might want to look away."

Fur and meat dripped from the hunched-up monster like wax from a lit candle, hitting the ground with wet thuds. Zenigata pulled a face as the head cracked in two, making a crunching noise and then falling away in pieces. Rather than blood, the open meat was dripping a black ichor that seemed to vanish as the new sunlight touched it, leaving behind a sticky figure that the sunbeams licked clean.

Jigen looked up at the sky and then let out a loud yawn, stretching upward and then putting his arms around his naked, bony body. "Who's got the friggin' bathrobe?" he asked with a mumble. 

"Here you go." Lupin tossed him his backpack and Jigen yanked a fluffy purple robe out of it, along with a pair of sandals. The man gruffly wrapped himself up in it, squinting at Zenigata in the dim morning light.

"How long's Pops been here?"

"About an hour. Apparently furry you's a fan of him."

"Huh. That Yata up in the trees playing sniper?" He jerked his head towards one of the pines and the other two followed his gaze, where Zenigata could just barely make out the edges of a wooden platform mounted against the trunk and a tiny barrel poking out of the branches.

"Yata, is that you?" he called out.

There was an awkward pause and finally an embarrassed, "Yes, Inspector."

"You hear everything?"

"Yes, Inspector."

"I know you're really excited about your new tranq rifle but come down from there. We're not arresting them today."

"Okay, Inspector."

Jigen let out a long sigh as he watched Yata make his way down the ladder, trying to balance the rifle in one hand and carry his flashlight in his teeth. He tugged his bathrobe a little tighter around himself and squinted at the trees.

"Eh, fuck it. Welcome to the party. You want breakfast or what?"


End file.
